Mt Jim Crow

This morning, some friends and I, made the mistake of climbing/hiking up Mt Jim Crow. The track is quite steep especially for someone who is as unfit as me.

Sunrise

Foggy Hill

Clouds

Quick Indicators Update

Due to assignments and other commitments, work on the Indicators has been a little slow lately. However we have been working on a quick Website that will display some simple graphs to visualize some of the Indicators data. We are using Open Flash Charts for the charting tool which seem to produce some very nice results.

Indicators

To summarise the progress so far:

• The data aggregation is fundamentally complete. A single, well indexed database now hosts all of the data we need to query. It refreshes weekly.
• We have a host of folk who are interested in the data so they can check out their courses in relation to the Indicators data.
• Writing has started on a conference paper connecting the Indicators data with the Seven Principles.
• The Web site has been started mainly to serve as a placeholder for the project.
• The first presentation based on the project is being planned for a few weeks time.

Online ed and non-verbal communications

I attended a workshop today to do with performance appraisals at my workplace. The facilitator quoted some research that suggested 7% of person to person conversation is what is said while the rest is distributed across inflection and non-verbals. This being the case I’m wondering what effect this has on education. For example if such a small proportion of a conversation is what’s said then surely the online students are missing out on quite a lot of information that would normally be received outside of “what is said”. Interestingly I found some prior research on the subject that looks at the value of emoticons in an online setting.

LMS and natural selection.

In a previous post I wrote about limitations of Learning Management Systems in general. It’s quite easy to find criticisms of such systems, but far more difficult to find solutions to the previously noted issues that they bring to a university but that’s what I believe is required. Concepts like personal learning environments (PLEs), while potentially a vision for the future are probably someway off for the average organization when you consider they tend to be focused on centralizing services and technologies for reasons such as risk mitigation and other commercial pressures. Business and organizational issues, rightly or wrongly, dictate that a LMS be used and it could be said that this comes at the cost of innovation and experimentation into to other avenues of teaching and learning. The organization mandates and LMS be used and associated policy ensures this is adhered to. Unfortunately this has the side effect of creating organizational resistance to any changes that may be seen to “compete” with single chosen system such as emerging teaching and learning innovations like PLEs. I believe the issue is one of balance between commercial realities and the need to research and innovate. It appears to me to be currently weighted disproportionately away from research and innovations around teaching and learning.

That said, a pragmatic approach needs to be taken by folk such as myself who are embedded in a context over which they have little influence which, for me, means to have a closer look at the problems of the LMS and seek solutions and alternatives to these issues within the confines of the situation I’m presented with. When time permits (if ever) I’d like to generate a list of well known criticisms of learning management systems and fit these into particular categories in order to define spheres of responsibility so that limitations can be assessed and addressed within our context. Should PLEs or another emerging concept start to become mainstream I doubt that it will be via a revolution but will be more of a Darwinian process of evolution.